Editorial: Semester 2, Week 1

Striving for pure objectivity in any journalism seems outdated, but striving for it while editing Honi Soit is simply impossible. The editors are part-politician from the outset, having been elected alongside your SRC and NUS representatives. Sometimes ballot box deals are done between these groups. Our office is in the SRC and the pro-union bumper…

Striving for pure objectivity in any journalism seems outdated, but striving for it while editing Honi Soit is simply impossible.

The editors are part-politician from the outset, having been elected alongside your SRC and NUS representatives. Sometimes ballot box deals are done between these groups. Our office is in the SRC and the pro-union bumper stickers stuck to its furniture appear to be structural. The SRC president, a member of a Labor left faction, can stop our paper from going to print.

Honi Soit is, proudly, a leftwing newspaper.

If it wasn’t, its coverage of the University’s failure to adequately provide support to campus sexual assault survivors would have been replaced by rugby results a long time ago.

However, there’s a difference between covering your beat and merely acting as a mouthpiece for a group.

If we use a student movement’s style guide, how is that any better than publishing a press release? If we forgo sending a reporter to a protest in favour of an opinion piece from a participant, don’t we just risk inaccurately reporting the story?

Honi Soit is a left-wing newspaper, not a left-wing newsletter. It is an activist force in its own right, and articles published within these pages have been catalysts for real change at the University.

The first, our seven-page spread on the University’s decision to move towards closing the Sydney College of the Arts. With the statements of students and decorated alumni throughout, we hope it demonstrates even just a fraction of what SCA means to the arts community, and what will be lost if plans proceed.

The second is our investigation into the failures of the new special consideration policy. When chemotherapy doesn’t warrant an extension on an assignment, it’s clear change is needed.

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We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. The University of Sydney – where we write, publish and distribute Honi Soit – is on the sovereign land of these people. As students and journalists, we recognise our complicity in the ongoing colonisation of Indigenous land. In recognition of our privilege, we vow to not only include, but to prioritise and centre the experiences of Indigenous people, and to be reflective when we fail to be a counterpoint to the racism that plagues the mainstream media.